This project is a completely home-grown implementation of an aircraft tracking system using Mode S messages received on a Universal Software Radio Peripheral (USRP) from Ettus Research. The system comprises of a software-defined baseband decoder, a GUI front-end and a real-time (smooth) JavaScript-enabled Google Earth feed.

For the Mode S/aviation/RF enthusiast: If you are interested in various notes, diagrams and screenshots that are more technical than these series of pages, please check out the dedicated page on my wiki as well.

Modez, Aviation Mapper and Software Defined Radio featured in GQ Australia (April/May)!

Screenshots from the GUI front-ends:

A plane at 514 km, with trails left behind showing flight corridors

Looking at an angle at Sydney Airport, with planes landing on overlapping approach trails.
ACARS messages shown spatially as coloured dots with message label and content in balloon pop-up.

Spatial representation of ACARS message transactions building up over half a day

This experiment involved acquiring CellID and signal strength information from the GSM cellular network, tracking one's position while acquiring this data, and finally presenting it nicely. It is summarised in the following pictures (full details are described in the sub-sections found top-left):

A system for distributed extensible particle simulations over multiple computers. Unfortunately I haven't exactly got around to distributing it. Although thanks to the generosity of Steven Foster, the many lab computers at my school are waiting. My report details the process and simulation design.

For my undergraduate honours thesis I conducted research into the unbuffered real-time detection of commercials on television with a view to muting the volume when ads are being broadcast. The research itself dealt with examining the features required to enable robust real-time detection. I developed a sophisticated video analysis and processing framework to underpin experimentation and compilation of results.

The following screenshots show the system running live (click on one to see the full-res image):